The form of Red Bull F1 is still too “swaying”, despite the victory in Miami

While Red Bull’s performance on the track in 2022 reached a new high, Ferstappen defeated Ferrari camp Charles Leclerc due to better top speed and tire management on Sunday, the Milton Keynes team continued to suffer from various problems over the weekend.

After Ferstappen was limited to 14 laps in FP1, Ferstappen passed only one lap on Friday’s FP2 when the first gear change led to him missing the start, only because of a new hydraulic problem to delay him in the garage.

Teammate Sergio Perez it looked like a delayed tire switch under the car’s safety would benefit, but the loss of power to its engine meant it couldn’t pass a second Ferrari with Carlos Science third, despite the fact that the Spaniard was stuck on old hard tires.

Red Bull arrived in Miami after an almost flawless weekend in Imola, where he won a dominant 1-2. But earlier both cars left the season opener in Bahrain, and Ferstappen suffered another pension in Australia.

While Ferstappen leads Leclerc 3-2 in wins after five races, an ominous sign of the team’s competitiveness, the two DNF Dutchmen meant he had to lead the championship rather than lag Leclerc by 19 points.

Speaking after the race, Ferstappen urged his team to find a way to regularly repeat Imola’s crash-free weekend, acknowledging that the team’s operation “is still too badly damaged and leaks”.

“For my part, I had a lot of problems on Friday, which jeopardizes your weekend, and especially yesterday,” Ferstappen said.

Sure, today everything went well from the beginning, but it could have been the other way around. And then you can certainly say, “Well, fair enough, because if you missed almost an entire Friday, what can you do?” About that?

“We just need to have a really positive weekend with no problems. I think of course Imola, we’ve had it, but it’s still a hit and too much, so we just have to make sure we’re more reliable and more.

“But as you can see, the car is fast. I’m very happy about that, I mean, if you’re slow and reliable, it’s probably not very good either.”

When asked by Motorsport.com about repeated issues, Red Bull team boss Christian Horner denied that RB18 was particularly fragile, and explained that the team’s reliability issues were due to “bad things” that he believed would be fixed.

“I don’t think the car is particularly fragile. I think in the pre-season tests you saw just meager things that appeared only at the beginning of the season, ”Horner said.

“It’s a disappointment, but, you know, we work closely with HRC [Honda] and they give us a lot of support, so I think we will fix them. ”